As mankind wars

One word bears the curse of all humanity:

Competition, the provenance of all misery

One platform swallows up human kind

Life is where they all have to perform

Personal identity and values hardly stand

As mankind wars with consumerism and socialism

The same rules apply to all, no matter their kind:

Education, wealth, power, fame is the norm;

Romance, tourism and luxury are its allies –

Hollywood has created an illusionary aspiration

And men and women reach misery in this pursuit

Comparison does not recognise uniqueness

Collectivism demands a division according to class

To stand out from one’s class requires alien strength

Though all must compete against the same principles

The lexical field of togetherness: Society, community, club…

Encourages a culture of dependency and the desire to be like others

It engenders crime and chaotic ideologies

And wrongly takes self-aspirations for selfishness

One word bears the curse of all humanity:

Competition, the provenance of all misery

If only humans could understand

That every being is different and every call unique,

If every country could keep to its own borders,

If every couple would learn to make their own relationship beautiful,

If social media had not made it so easy to kill privacy,

If it could be taught that success is a very relative word,

If the notions of comparatives and superlatives did not exist,

If magnificence and splendour were not glamorised over simplicity,

If there were no such things as race or colour or gender or age or faith

If conventions and exceptions were non-existent words in the dictionary,

And if the theory of acceptable and non-acceptable was a myth,

Competition would be a noun deprived of meaning

And the wars of mankind would have long ceased